nokia

In one of the biggest news stories of the year, Nokia has acquired all of the rights to the Symbian operating system (OS) and open sourced it under the Eclipse license. In one fell swoop, the need for mobile Linux just became far less obvious.

With 60 percent of the mobile market, Symbian has long been the dominant mobile OS. While Nokia has recently been dabbling with Linux, this move presumably will shift its efforts back to Symbian.

Indeed, Nokia's move may actually completely refactor the mobile industry's rising affection for Linux. As Glyn Moody suggests, developers already know Symbian and are likely to redouble their efforts there instead of moving to rival platforms like Google's Android and other mobile Linux platforms.

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. It's not Linux, per se, that is important to mobile. It's open source. Whether through an open-source Symbian or open-source Linux, the benefits to developers is the same: Transparency, flexibility, and community.… Read more

Mobile phone maker Nokia announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire the 52 percent of mobile software specialist Symbian that it does not already own, in a cash deal valued at about 264 million euros, or $410 million.

In addition, Nokia and a number of other electronics makers are forming the Symbian Foundation to drive the development of Web applications for use by consumers on cell phones. The foundation plans to provide a unified platform that has a common user interface framework and that will be available for all foundation members under a royalty-free license, Nokia said.

"Our vision … Read more

T-Mobile announced two new cell phones for its HotSpot @Home service today. The Nokia 6301 is a silver candy bar phone and the SGH-T339 is flip phone in bright red. Both handsets offer integrated Wi-Fi so you'll be able to make calls on T-Mobile's standard cellular network and your home wireless broadband network. And like T-Mobile's other HotSpot @Home handsets, the Nokia 6086, Samsung Katalyst, and Samsung SGH-T409, you can switch between regular and Wi-Fi calls without interruption. Features for both phones are functional without being flashy. The 6301 includes a music player, stereo Bluetooth, a 2-megapixel … Read more

With more GPS-enabled handsets on the way--iPhone 3G, I'm looking at you--there are few Web 2.0 niches that are more hyped-up than location-based services.

The latest evidence: Nokia announced Monday that it plans to acquire Plazes, a start-up still in private beta.

Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008, were not disclosed. Plazes, which is based in Zurich, Switzerland, but works primarily out of Berlin, will become part of Nokia's Software and Services division. Plazes' technology will likely be worked into future mobile apps.

It's good … Read more

Samsung showed its greener side last week when it unveiled two environmentally friendly cell phones at the World IT Show in Seoul, Korea. The Samsung W510 is the company's first mobile to be made of "bio-plastic," which is produced with natural material extracted from corn. In addition, the W510 uses a water-soluble coating and no heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, were used in the production of the cell phone.

The second handset, the Samsung F268, is made from the same material but it, as well as its accessories, also has the benefit of not … Read more

Correction at 10 a.m. PDT: The story incorrectly listed which push e-mail solutions the E71 works with. It does not work with BlackBerry Connect or GoodLink.

It may be that the Nokia E series sometimes suffers from Jan Brady syndrome as it gets overshadowed by a flashier member of its family--the Nokia N series (aka Marcia Brady). But the E series is just as bright and deserves some recognition too.

Traditionally, the E series devices have been very corporate centric and serious in design, but now Nokia is updating the line with the introduction of the Nokia E66 and … Read more

Nokia just launched a pretty decent midrange phone for Verizon, dubbed the Nokia 6205. The 6205 is one of the very few CDMA phones Nokia has launched here in the U.S. It comes with a decent array of features, like a 1.3-megapixel camera, EV-DO, voice dialing, a microSD card slot, video messaging, 58MB internal memory, external music player keys, and more. The 6205 will be available in two flavors; a simple blue version, plus a special black "The Dark Knight" edition to coincide with the movie of the same name. The "Dark Knight" edition … Read more

With the 3G iPhone launch finally out of the way, we thought Nokia would start trumpeting its own touch-screen darling. It hasn't yet, but that doesn't mean a Nokia touch-screen phone isn't already out there--in fact, there are pictures to "prove" it.

A few months ago, a blogger got hold of a supposed Nokia touch-screen phone, but the pictures were dark and not very clear. Now more pictures have surfaced on a now-defunct Flickr stream, this time with a Vodafone logo on board.

So, if we take the pics at face value, what can we … Read more

Being a native New Yorker, I've seen a lot of knock-off products, such as designer clothes, bags, fragrances, watches, DVDs, and even sneakers. But I had no idea cell phones were a part of the list of bootleg products.

According to Phone Scoop and RCR Wireless News, federal authorities in New York have uncovered nearly 20,000 counterfeit phones, many of them posing as popular brand names from major handset manufacturers. The phones were seized in March 2008 from a company called Perfect Connection, located in Queens, N.Y. Among the counterfeit handsets were 5,503 Sony Ericsson, 5,… Read more